Bonuses for Conviction Rates

Now here is a thoroughly bad idea. Jessica Fender reports in the Denver Post,

Eighteenth Judicial District* Attorney
Carol Chambers has created an unusual incentive for her felony
prosecutors, paying them bonuses if they achieve a predetermined
standard for conviction rates at trial.

The threshold for an assistant district attorney to earn the average
$1,100 reward: Participate in at least five trials during the year, with
70 percent of them ending in a felony conviction. Plea bargains or
mistrials don't count.

I understand that she wants to reward the better performers and have an objective measure for deciding who is better, but the measure falls considerably short.

When I was in the Air Force, it very quickly became apparent to me that
the biggest problem with inspections was inspectors who checked what was
easy to check instead of what was really important. In civilian life
the problem was a tad less obvious but every bit as real. When I worked
for a corporation, management was briefly into "management by
objectives." You set goals and got rewarded on whether you met them.
The key to success was setting modest goals; setting ambitious goals
meant no bonus.

In terms of advocacy skills, the best trial lawyer wins the toughest
cases, not necessarily the most cases. If the manager assigns the
toughest cases to the best trial lawyers and gives the easy ones to the
rookies, as he should, the rookie might well have a better win rate than
the star.

In addition, prosecutors are different from other trial lawyers. It's
not just about winning. It's about justice. Two defendants who have
committed the same offense may be significantly different in what they
deserve. Offering a plea deal might be the right thing to do in one
case and very wrong in another, and the difference might have nothing to
do with likelihood of winning at trial. Giving a financial incentive to take the easier case to trial places financial incentive at odds with ethical duty, always a bad idea. Ms. Chambers says she will count on the prosecutors' integrity and her authority to grant exemptions to deal with this aspect of the problem. Perhaps that will work, but perhaps not.

In a job this complex with this many unquantifiable factors, the
decision of who is the better performer must necessarily be based on
judgment, not numbers. There is no getting around it.